Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations

Viewpoints: Is The Individual Mandate A Tax And Who Benefits If It’s Undone?; A Check On ACA Enrollment

A selection of opinions on health care from around the country.

The New York Times:
When A Tax Cut Costs Millions Their Medical Coverage
Though their ham-fisted attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act failed in September, Republican lawmakers and the Trump administration won’t give up on efforts that would take away health care from millions of people. They’re now out to do it through the equally sloppy and cruel tax bills barreling through Congress. The Senate could vote as soon as next week on a bill that, according to one government estimate, would increase the number of people who don’t have health insurance by 13 million and cause insurance companies to raise premiums substantially. (11/24)

Huffington Post:
The GOP Crusade Against Obamacare’s Mandate Says A Lot About How The Party Changed
Senate Republicans are set to vote next week on tax legislation that would eliminate the financial penalty for people who don’t get health insurance, often called the “individual mandate.” And plenty of Republicans seem positively giddy about the prospect. ... Republicans and their supporters have been bashing the individual mandate so loudly and so vociferously that it’s easy to forget this outrage is a relatively recent phenomenon. Not so long ago, it was easy to find GOP officials and conservative intellectuals who supported the mandate, and not simply because they thought it was the smart thing to do. They also thought it was the right thing to do. In fact, they were the ones who first put the idea on the political agenda. (Jonathan Cohn, 11/25)

Boston Globe:
Obamacare’s Individual Mandate Is A Tax On The Working Poor
[Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa] Murkowski’s positions — unwilling to kill Obamacare but very willing to kill the individual mandate — put her squarely in the mainstream. The individual mandate, unfair and ineffective, has always been the most disliked feature of the law, and not just by Republicans. (Jeff Jacoby, 11/25)

Forbes:
No, Obamacare Enrollment Is Not Strong, Not By A Longshot
A headline this week in The Hill shocked me: "ObamaCare enrollment strong in third week of sign-ups." The Hill is a serious, well-respected, non-partisan news source. But any reader taking this headline at face value would be seriously misled about what is really going on with Obamacare enrollments during this fifth open enrollment season. ... Even the guru of ACA enrollment figures--Charles Gaba, who runs ACASignups.net -- concedes that total Exchange enrollments this year likely will top out at only 10 million. Yet even this prediction (made just before the open enrollment began) now already seems optimistic. To hit that target, the pace of enrollments for the balance of the open enrollment period would have to be 2.2 times as high as we've observed in the first 19 days! Not impossible, to be sure, but neither is this highly probable. (Chris Conover,11/24)

Bloomberg:
Alabama Senate Race Leaves Pro-Lifers No Choice
For many voters in Alabama, the Senate election is more than an agonizing choice. It is an impossible one. National attention has focused on half the dilemma. Roy Moore, the Republican candidate, is credibly accused of having been a sexual predator, including against girls. His defenders, all too many of them pastors, have been disgraceful: casting the victims as temptresses, excusing him on the basis of idle speculation that other politicians have been guilty of worse. We have no reason to believe that the Democratic candidate, Doug Jones, is guilty of anything remotely as horrible. He appears to be a run-of-the-mill Democrat. His disqualifications are different in kind. If you take seriously the view that abortion is the unjust taking of human life, as many Alabamians do, then Jones’s position on it is a nearly insuperable barrier to voting for him. (Ramesh Ponnuru, 11/22)

The Kansas City Star:
Dr. Google Should Not Be Your Primary Care Physician
Scrolling through Facebook, I am inundated with advertisements claiming that I can “transform my body in 4 weeks,” “cleanse my liver,” or “lose 10 pounds in 1 week with apple cider vinegar.” These clickbait posts often operate under the guise of “natural remedies,” but they are the modern-day snake oil salesmen. They promise that I can drastically improve my life and even halt the aging process with a green smoothie and, occasionally, by ignoring the advice of years of extensive medical research. (Dahnika Short, 11/26)

The Washington Post:
When Doctors Refuse To See Transgender Patients, The Consequences Can Be Dire
Go back to California, the physician at a minor emergency center in a suburb of Tulsa told me. The words were flung — practically vomited — at me. I had gone to the center, a relatively new building that was beautifully decorated, on a Sunday morning in 2010 in terrible pain because of complications from surgery. The receptionist was pleasant, and the physician had entered the exam room smiling. He was about 50 years old and seemed friendly. But when I explained why I was there, the friendly smile quickly disappeared, and his face contorted into an expression of disgust and revulsion. (Laura Arrowsmith, 11/26)

This is part of the KHN Morning Briefing, a summary of health policy coverage from major news organizations. Sign up for an email subscription.